A lot of observers are hailing the spectacle as the Arab Spring of sports. You can almost hear the Beatles’ singing “You say you want a revolution,” as background music to their odes.

It certainly fits the prevailing national moods of believing all accusers and Little People standing up to The Establishment.

The Little People in this case are UT fans fed up with incompetent leaders, big-money boosters and the demise of the Vol Nation.

I’m all for fans having a voice in the process. The problem is their voice is often misinformed, emotionally driven or just plain dumb.

Or haven’t you ever read an internet message board?

If every school caved to popular sentiment like Tennessee did Sunday, Clemson would have fired Dabo Swinney in 2010. Bobby Bowden would have been run out of West Virginia.

LSU would have canned Ed Orgeron after losing to Troy. Gus Malzahn would have been fired last month instead of leading Auburn into this week’s SEC Championship Game.

That just starts the list, and few on it were guilty of anything worse than losing games. Schiano was supposedly guilty of covering up Jerry Sandusky’s crimes.

It began when former Penn State assistant Mike McQueary was deposed in a 2015 civil lawsuit. He said another ex-Penn State assistant, Tom Bradley, told him he’d heard a Sandusky shower story from Schiano in the early 1990s.

That deposition was unsealed last year, and Schiano vehemently denied the accusation. Bradley testified under oath the he knew nothing about the child abuse before the Sandusky’s behavior became public.

The scandal was scrupulously investigated and aggressively prosecuted by local, state, federal and private authorities. Schiano was never remotely implicated by any of them, yet this was painted Sunday on a huge rock near the football stadium:

“SCHIANO COVERED UP CHILD RAPE AT PENN STATE.”

Athletic Director John Currie said he thoroughly vetted Schiano. He knew the accusation was too flimsy to fly.

He also knew fans were more upset that Schiano wasn’t Jon Gruden.

Currie knew all that, and he essentially fired a guy based on the demands of a mob that was fueled by a 25-year-old story told by someone who heard it from someone else who denied under oath that it ever happened.

I doubt any of the protesters would want themselves judged in a similar manner. But the fiasco is being acclaimed as the dawn of a new era of fan empowerment.